Ph.D. Candidate in Political Theory, Georgetown University
I am a Ph.D. candidate in political theory in the Department of Government at Georgetown University. My dissertation analyzes the conceptual impact and reconstruction of the Enlightenment political discourse on "civilization" and "barbarism" in Latin American political thought during the long nineteenth century. In this period, I integrate the region's historical stages of colonialism, wars of Independence, nation building, and industrialization with its social and political thought, covering the topics of empire, colonialism and post-colonialism, liberalism, Latin American political thought, Enlightenment, modernity, history, and republicanism.
My dissertation echoes the broader questions that currently drive my research, such as: How do we understand "crisis" in the history of political thought? How do ideas of "history," "progress" and "nature" shape our political thinking? and, what does it mean to be "modern?" Working primarily with Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English texts, I am interested in drawing out the historical links and the confluence of ideas in these varied linguistic and intellectual traditions. Educated in the liberal arts, I incorporate different areas of study in my research (literature, history, philosophy, art) to broaden our understanding of what It means to think "politically."
Prior to my work in political theory, I studied intellectual history at the University of St Andrews (MLitt) and English literature at the University of Pennsylvania (B.A.)
Dissertation Project
A Mirror of Modernity: Revisiting Civilization and Barbarism in Latin American Political Thought
"There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism."
-Walter Benjamin
"The barbarian either totally mocks or totally worships. Civilization is a smile that discreetly combines irony and respect.”
-Nicolas Gomez Davila
Abstract: How have the concepts of civilization and barbarism shaped our political thinking? Inherently antagonistic concepts, yet inherently connected to each other, civilization and barbarism encapsulate within their duality an essence of politics that this dissertation explores by way of historical inquiry into a time and place where these terms took root. Although these concepts have their origins in Enlightenment theories of societal development, historical progress, and human nature that are problematically associated with colonialism and empire, they still merit inquiry due to their reception and use in the region which stood as one of the original representatives of “barbarism”: the Americas. The development of the Latin American intellectual tradition from the 19th-20th century included a meaningful evaluation of the concepts of civilization and barbarism that elucidates their limitations and, at once, their opportunity for reconstruction. This project’s focus on the Latin American intellectual tradition seeks to demonstrate that the region’s continued engagement with the concepts of civilization and barbarism long before imposed on it were part of an intellectual interpretation and response to political crises. By using the concepts of civilization and barbarism to probe the nature of these crises, we can identify an effort to reconceptualize these traditionally oppositional terms and understand them as a joint feature of political thinking inherent to any self-critical society.
The Enchanted Island Before the Cell of Prospero - Prospero, Miranda, Caliban and Ariel (Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2) Detail.
One of the most notably hostile relationships in Shakespeare's The Tempest is that between Prospero and Caliban—the banished Duke of Milan who has arrived on a new island and the native “savage” whom he has enslaved. Prospero takes pride in his books, but uses his knowledge to manipulate nature. Caliban, though crude, recognizes a more peaceful time on his island before Prospero arrived. In this sense, Prospero and Caliban can be seen as representing a type of dialectic between the two concepts that my dissertation covers, civilization and barbarism, above conveyed by the oppositional stance between these two characters. This play, moreover, was deeply Influential In Latin America, and was readapted by thinkers Jose Enrique Rodó and Roberto Fernández-Retamar.
Get in touch:
nlr46 [at] georgetown [dot] edu
